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Barley Broth

A hearty broth made with pearl barley, lamb or bone, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Boil ½ cup pearl barley in 1 gallon of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Place 3 pounds of lamb chops or a rib soup bone in a stew pan and cover with water.

  3. Add the chopped vegetables and cook until tender.

Simmer and finish

  1. Combine the tender vegetables with the barley water and simmer for 2 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Thickens the broth as its starch releases during simmering, giving body and a soft chew.
Lamb chops or rib soup bone
Releases fat and gelatin into the water, adding savory richness and body to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color while softening into the broth.
Onions
Build savory depth as they soften and release their sugars during long cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer the vegetables and barley water together for 2 hours. A gentle simmer lets collagen and fat from the meat and starch from the barley blend into the liquid slowly. A hard boil can cloud the broth and break up the vegetables and barley.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, lamb, carrot, turnip, onion, celery):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, lamb, carrot, turnip, onion, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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